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While no one will claim that George R.R. Martin's epic series, "A Song of Ice and Fire," is historically accurate, there are a number of historical parallels that can be drawn from the characters and plotline–particularly from medieval Europe. While most of those relate to epic battles or former monarchs or other royalty, another of Martin's characters, so to speak, is the disease greyscale (1).
Greyscale is a contagious disease that seems to come in at least two distinct forms: greyscale, an endemic and slow acting, highly contagious illness that can affect either adults or children; and the grey plague, a rapidly-spreading epidemic that can wipe out entire swaths of cities in a short period of time. Both versions of the illness have a high fatality rate (no exact details are given, but it seems to be close to 100%, especially in adults). Recovery from greyscale makes one immune to outbreaks of grey plague, so they seem to be caused either by the same microbe or ones which are very closely related.
The Epidemiology of Greyscale
Greyscale is a disfiguring disease. As its name suggests, it transforms the skin into a hardened, scaly tissue. As the skin dies, it becomes grey in color with permanent cracks and fissures. Infection that spreads across the face can cause blindness.
Like many diseases we consider to be "childhood" diseases (measles, mumps, smallpox, chickenpox, etc.), children seem to be spared the worst of the disease and are the most likely to recover from the illness, though recovery still appears to be quite rare. The disease is most common in Essos, but can also be found occasionally throughout Westeros, including north of the Wall (more on that below).
Greyscale is believed to be transmitted primarily person-to-person via direct skin contact. We see this in the books with the infection of Jon Connington and on the TV show with Jorah Mormont, as both characters are transporting/protecting Tyrion Lannister and apparently are exposed to the pathogen during a battle with the Stone Men (2, 3). The Stone Men are victims in the last stage of greyscale infection, where the skin is entirely calcified and there is involvement of muscle, bone, and internal organs, including the brain. Late signs of greyscale infection include violent insanity, leading sufferers to violently attack anyone who comes near. As these Stone Men are highly feared as sources of the disease, greyscale appears to be contagious for the entire duration of infection, from the development of symptoms to near-death.
If a person has been exposed to greyscale, but is not yet showing symptoms, they can check for impending infection by pricking their toes and fingers each day. Once they're no longer able to feel the knife, that's bad news–greyscale infection is likely, as insensitivity to touch is one of the early signs. Once the scaling begins, the victim no longer feels any pain in the affected areas, making the Stone Men essentially invulnerable to pain.
The incubation period of greyscale seems to be very short. As soon as Jorah and Tyrion realize they are safe and the Stone Men are defeated, Jorah rolls up his sleeve and we see that the initial small patch of greyscale has already appeared.
Another prominent victim of greyscale, Shireen Baratheon, is thought to have acquired greyscale via contact with a fomite (an inanimate object that serves as a vehicle to transmit an infectious agent between people)–in her case, a beloved wooden doll clothed in Baratheon House colors from when she was an infant. Her father, Stannis, implies that this may have been a form of bioterrorism–that Stannis received the doll from a Dornish trader on Dragonstone. He tells his daughter, "No doubt he'd heard of your birth, and assumed new fathers were easy targets" (S05E04). "I still remember how you smiled when I placed that doll in your cradle, and you pressed it to your cheek," where evidence of greyscale is still present (4).
A number of remedies have been proposed to treat greyscale, but none of them are proven effective. They include treating it with boiling water containing limes; chopping off of the infected limbs; religious means/magic; and maybe fire–in A Dance with Dragons, Tyrion touches a Stone Man with his torch, and the Stone Man shrieks in pain (even while having bone showing through his skin, which apparently doesn't bother him). Whether fire could be a cure is unclear.
Also in A Dance with Dragons, we read of Tyrion's musings on treating greyscale: "He had heard it said that there were three good cures for greyscale: axe and sword and cleaver. Hacking off afflicted parts did sometimes stop the spread of the disease, Tyrion knew, but not always. Many a man had sacrificed one arm or foot, only to find the other going grey. Once that happened, hope was gone." As such, the infectious agent seems to enter into the bloodstream and spread throughout the body at some point during the infection, and at this point, local measures such as amputation are no longer useful. Other home remedies, such as cleansing the infected area with vinegar, are also employed. In fact, Jon Connington, once he realizes he's been infected, soaks his hand in bad wine instead of vinegar, because he believes that if he asks for vinegar, it will be an obvious "tell" that he has the disease.
In the TV series (S05E04), Stannis says to Shireen regarding her infection, "I called in every Maester in this side of the world, every healer, every apothecary. They stopped the disease and saved your life." However, no details are given on the show regarding how it was stopped (medicine? magic?), or if a mechanism exists that could be used on an adult instead of an infant. When Daenerys asks Jorah if there is a cure, he tells her simply that he doesn't know, and she directs him to leave, find one, and return to her.
Cultural response
Largely, those with greyscale are shunned and sent elsewhere, especially to the ruins of Valyria (5) where a whole colony of Stone Men live. Shireen asks Stannis, "Are you ashamed of me, Father?", understanding that her obvious greyscale scars are a sign of stigma for their entire family. Stannis tells his daughter, "Everyone advised me to send you to the ruins of Valyria to live our your short life with the Stone Men before the sickness spread throughout the castle. I told them all to go to hell." (Father of the Year before that whole burning stuff, Stannis!)
Similarly, both the books and show note the existence of greyscale beyond the wall among the Wildlings–and that the free folks' response to greyscale infection is exile and/or death. In the books, a wildling named Val sees Shireen, and notes Shireen has a condition they call "the grey death," which is always fatal in children–because they're given either hemlock, a pillow, or a blade rather than be allowed to live. She also suggests that greyscale may become quiescent and return later, saying "The grey death sleeps, only to wake again. The child [Shireen] is not clean."
On the TV version, the wildling Gilly takes the place of Val, and while she is not as frightened of Shireen's greyscale, she notes she's also had experience with the illness. She tells the tale of two of her sisters, who contracted greyscale (exactly how, we're not told). Though he did not kill them as Val suggested, Gilly noted that her father "made them move out of the keep, into the hut outside. None of them were allowed to go near them, but we heard them, especially at night. They started to sound not like themselves." Gilly saw them again "only once, at the end. They were covered with it. Their faces, their arms. They acted like animals. My father had to drag them out to the woods on a rope." Shireen doesn't find out what happened to them after that, but we can guess it's not good.
What are some real-life parallels?
Clearly greyscale is another invention of Martin's that doesn't quite match up to any real infectious disease (6), and I'll leave that linked article to summarize some of the pros and cons of the alternative diagnoses. But given the other historical parallels, leprosy (Hansen's disease) is probably the closest real-life affliction to greyscale, due to the route of transmission (I'll elaborate on that below), symptoms, incubation period, and particularly the cultural response to those who are affected.
Like those with leprosy, sufferers of greyscale can become disfigured, are considered "unclean" and shuffled off to the far corners of the map, feared and then ignored by their family and friends. Connington, when hiding his infection, noted that "Queer as it seemed, men who would cheerfully face battle and risk death to rescue a companion would abandon that same companion in a heartbeat if he were known to have greyscale"–a similar phenomenon to what still can happen today with stigmatized diseases such as leprosy. A case of greyscale is a source of stigma for both the sufferer (even if they survive, like Shireen) and for the family, as there will always be those who fear contagion.
Though evidence is gathering that leprosy is actually transmitted via the respiratory route (like its cousin, tuberculosis), for centuries people believed it could be spread by touch, as greyscale is. So even though the transmission route for the two diseases really isn't the same, the *presumption* that leprosy can be spread by touch is still incredibly common. The lengthy period between infection and outward symptoms of the affliction is also similar, taking years from exposure to the final stages of infection that we see in the Stone Men. Leprosy can also take years or decades to progress, and while untreated leprosy is not typically a cause of death itself, it can lead to death indirectly due to secondary infections and other issues.
One of the early signs of leprosy is also numbness in an affected area as nerves are damaged by the infection, as Tyrion tried to evaluate after his exposure to the Stone Men, as well as a general thickening and stiffness of the skin. It doesn't get to the level that's seen with the Stone Men–one of the biggest problems with leprosy is actually secondary infections, which can lead to loss of digits or even whole limbs rather than a whole-body calcification of the skin–but many of the hallmarks of greyscale are very similar to leprosy.
While leprosy is now treatable with antibiotics, it wasn't all that long ago that we had our own leper colonies in the U.S. (you can read about one of them here, also on a near-deserted island where the afflicted were largely left to fend for themselves with some occasional governmental assistance, similar to Valyria/the Sorrows). Martin himself even notes that Valyria is "like a leper colony." Leprosy, and its stigma, remains an issue in some countries still today, and the purposeful isolation of those who have leprosy and exclusion from society persists.
However, while there are many similarities, leprosy doesn't have an epidemic form equivalent to the grey plague. Described in A Dance with Dragons, it's suggested that the grey plague wiped out half of Oldtown in the southwest of Westeros, and was only stopped by closing the gates and preventing anyone from entering or leaving. And like the Black Plague, the grey plague's arrival in Pentos (a city in Essos) came by ship, and its spread into the city was possibly aided by rats. So is there an airborne form of greyscale that causes the grey plague? Could it be similar to Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the Black Plague: transmitted by rats and fleas (or skin to skin in the case of greyscale) in its more mild form, but occasionally ending up in the lungs of an unfortunate victim and spread via the air after that, causing massive epidemics? Is it zoonotic, spread via rats? Will we see the grey plague on the TV series or not?
Lingering Questions
While comparisons to other real infections are interesting, my real question is–what is Martin going to do with greyscale? How does it feature into the larger end game, when we move beyond just a human "Game of Thrones" into the battle for humanity itself against the White Walkers and their army of undead wights? With all the time spent on the affliction in both the books and particularly in the show, there has to be some payoff somewhere, right?
In some ways, the wights beyond the wall and Stone Men are similar–undead, or nearly-dead, aggressive hunters of humans, with no sense of humanity left. When we last saw Jorah in the TV version, he had confessed his affliction to Daenerys, and she sent him off to find a cure. Will he find Dany after her arrival in Westeros and bring with him an army of (now healthy?) Stone Men–healed by fire perhaps, to fight against those brought back to life by ice? Will he return to Valyria–an area largely abandoned except as a place of exile for the Stone Men since The Doom a thousand years ago–and learn the truth of what happened there? Could Valyria provide a key to ending both greyscale and perhaps also the White Walkers? Or is the haunting poem Tyrion and Jorah recited as they rowed down the Rhoyne toward the ruins of the city foreshadowing what's going to happen to Westeros?
It's interesting that most stories open with an infection that ushers in the apocalypse: The Stand; The Passage series; The Walking Dead; World War Z; I Am Legend; the MaddAddam trilogy; the Planet of the Apes reboot; The Last of Us video game; even back a century or two to the Scarlet Plague or The Last Man. I could go on and on. Martin is known for taking many fantasy tropes and turning them on their heads, so instead of having a plague begin the downfall of society, could greyscale serve to save it somehow? With reportedly two seasons left in the TV series after Sunday's Season 6 finale, we'll have less time to wait and find out than it takes a newly-infected greyscale patient to turn into a Stone Man.
(1) The information provided on greyscale in this article is a mix of literature from the books and the show. Note that the show, to my recollection, hasn't delved into the grey plague, so information on that malady comes exclusively from the books. Also note some of the victims of greyscale differ in the books versus in the show (eg Jorah Mormont taking Jon Connington's place in the TV version).
(2) Though Jorah denies any contact with the Stone Men initially, and it isn't 100% clear if he was touched during the scene, he does back off from Daenerys when she moves toward him in S06E05, when he discloses his condition (which is now all the way up his forearm). This suggests he does believe he acquired it through direct contact with a Stone Man.
(3) Though these sufferers are uniformly called Stone Men, and the ones seen on-screen appear to be male, presumably there are also Stone Women. Possibly loss of hair as the skin calcifies could lead to a more androgynous look.
(4) I should note there are some alternative views about exactly how Shireen's greyscale infection was acquired, and about the use of greyscale as a biological weapon.
(5) Or on "the Sorrows" in the novels.
(6) I don't agree with several things in that article, written by a dermatologist. It concludes based mainly on symptoms and a bit on epidemiology that greyscale is something more like smallpox or HPV and largely rules out a leprosy-like illness. It also notes the potential for an infectious agent that's only infectious to those with an underlying genetic susceptibility, but I don't think there's much evidence to suggest that.
Find other posts in today's carnival on the science of Game of Thrones!
One Reason Scientists and Science Writers Want to Talk About Game of Thrones by Matt Shipman
Biology Would Leave the Game of Thrones Dragons Grounded by David Hone
Dire Wolves Were Real by Brian Switek
Winter is coming: climate change and biodiversity beyond the Wall by Jacquelyn Gill
White Walkers: a warning letter from north of The Wall by Michelle LaRue
Tales from a Westeros Geologist by Miles Traer
A Storm of Chemistry by Raychelle Burks
The Heating Engineers of Winterfell by Jesse Emspak]]>
We've been expecting it, and now it's here.
Yesterday, two article were released showing that MCR-1, the plasmid-associated gene that provides resistance to the antibiotic colistin, has been found in the United States. And not just in one place, but in two distinct cases: a woman with a urinary tract infection (UTI) in Pennsylvania, reported in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy, and a positive sample taken from a pig's intestine as part of the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS), which tracks resistant bacteria related to retail meat products. Not surprising, not unexpected, but still, not good.
Colistin is an old antibiotic. Dating back to the 1950s, it's been used sparingly over the decades because it can cause serious damage to the kidneys and nervous system. It's also typically administered intravenously in humans, so you can't just pop a colistin pill and be sent home from the doctor. Newer preparations appear to be safer, and because of the problem with antibiotic resistance in general and limited treatment options for multidrug-resistant Gram-negative infections in particular, colistin has seen a new life in the last decade or so as a last line of defense against some of these almost-untreatable infections.
Because of its sparing use in humans, resistance has not been much of an issue until recently. And while human use is relatively rare compared to other types of antibiotics, in animals, the story is different. Because colistin is old and cheap, it's used as an additive to feed in Chinese livestock, to make them grow faster and fatter. (We do this here in the U.S. too, but using different antibiotics than colistin). So as would be expected, use of this antibiotic led to the evolution and spread of a resistant strain, due to the presence of the MCR-1 gene. By the first time they saw this resistance, it was already present in 20% of the pigs they tested near Shanghai, and 15% of the raw meat samples they tested. In this case, the gene is on a plasmid, which makes it easier to spread to other types of bacteria. To date, most of the reports of MCR-1 have been in E. coli, but it's also been found in Salmonella and Klebsiella pneunoniae–all gut bacteria that can be spread from animals via contaminated food products, or person-to-person when someone carrying the bacterium doesn't wash their hands after using the bathroom.
So a question becomes, how exactly did it get here? And that's very difficult to say right now. The hospital where the human case was reported notes that the patient reported no travel history in the past 5 months (so it's unlikely that she traveled to China, for instance, and picked up the gene or bacterium carrying it there). The hospital says they've not found other MCR-1 positive isolates from other patients, but also that they've only been testing specimens for 3 weeks, so…yeah. Hard to say. People and animals (like the tested pig) can carry E. coli or other species that harbor MCR-1 in their gut without becoming ill, so it may have been in the population for awhile (as they've seen in Brazil) before it came to the attention of medical researchers. Perhaps it's been circulating in some of our meat products, or spreading in a chain of miniscule transfers of shit from person to person to person to person, for longer than we realize. Or both.
I was asked on Twitter yesterday, "Should I panic today or put that off until next week?" I'm not an advocate of panic myself, but I do think this is yet another concern and another hit on our antibiotic arsenal. It's not widespread in this country and as mentioned, colistin is luckily not a first-line drug, so it won't affect all *that* many people–for now, at least.
There are already papers out there showing bacteria that have both NDM-1 (or related variants) and MCR-1 genes. NDM-1 is a gene that provides resistance to another class of last-resort antibiotics, the carbapenems. (Maryn McKenna has covered this extensively on her blog). When carbapenems fail, treatment with colistin sometimes works. But if the bacterium is resistant to both colistin and carbapenems, well…not good. That hasn't been reported yet in the U.S., but it's only a matter of time, as McKenna notes.
It doesn't mean that we're out of antibiotics (yet) or that everyone who has one of these resistant infections will be unable to find a treatment that works (yet). But we're inching ever closer to those days, one resistant bacterium at a time.]]>
Claim One: the current Zika virus outbreak is due to the release of genetically-modified mosquitoes by British company Oxitec. The suggestion is that GMO mosquitoes were released in the same area of Brazil now experiencing Zika outbreaks, and somehow these mosquitoes caused the outbreak. The mosquitoes are engineered to require the antibiotic tetracycline in order to survive development in the wild, so when a wild female mosquito breeds with a male GMO mosquitoe, it's essentially is a death sentence to the female's offspring. Theorists argue that livestock use of tetracycline leaves this antibiotic in the environment, allowing some offspring to survive. Somehow, Zika is inserted into this.
Who's claiming this? Stories at Natural News, the Daily Mirror, The Ecologist, and Antimedia, among others. Alex Jones brings in the Bill Gates connection.
What's wrong with it? There's absolutely nothing that makes sense to relate this to Zika. Even if these GMO mosquitoes can reproduce, that doesn't mean they're suddenly infected with the Zika virus. This article probably lays it out the best as far as a suggested mechanism, but even then it's a convoluted mess, suggesting a transposon* (a "jumping gene") moved from the mosquito into Zika virus (but where did the Zika come from in the first place though? was it already in Brazil?), then that transposon made Zika more virulent and gave the virus "an enhanced ability to enter and disrupt human DNA" (what??), which then leads to microcephaly. All without absolutely any citations from the scientific literature to back up this scenario, of course.
And that's even assuming that the area where the testing occurred was the same as where the mosquitoes were released. It's not, as both The Mad Virologist and Christie Wilcox point out. Both have many more details taking down this theory as well.
Claim Two: a program encouraging pregnant women to get the Tdap vaccine led to the presumed increase in microcephaly in Brazilian babies. Because, toxins?
Who's claiming this? Really credible places, like Brazilian Shrunken Head Babies (not even joking).
What's wrong with it? Pretty much everything. First, the vaccine isn't recommended until relatively late in pregnancy; even one of the links cited by the "shrunken heads" page notes that it's suggested in the 27th to 36th week of pregnancy. This is very late in pregnancy to have such a severe effect on brain/skull development. For other microbes that cause microcephaly (such as cytomegalovirus or rubella), infection occurring in the first half of the pregnancy (before 20 weeks) is usually associated with a higher likelihood of adverse developmental outcomes, not one very late like Tdap. And of course, this theory completely contradicts the "Zika-GMO mosquito" one, which suggests that Zika is the cause.
Biologically, this makes zero sense–and furthermore, why wouldn't other countries be seeing this spike, if Tdap is truly the cause? Women in the U.S. and other countries also receive this vaccine during pregnancy, but we haven't seen an increase in microcephaly cases. Furthermore, a recent study has demonstrated yet again that Tdap is very safe during pregnancy.
Claim Three: Rockefeller something something bioterrorism something, maybe. They've taken the fact that an organization, the American Type Culture Collection (ATCC), has Zika virus available on their website, and twisted that into apparently some kind of deliberate release, maybe? It's all pretty shadowy. [Updated: this site very clearly says the Rockefellers invented it to kill people. If that were true, they did a pretty shitty job].
Who's claiming this? Chemtrails Global Skywatch and The Freethought Project.
What's wrong with it? Even the Freethought Project post basically unravels its own conspiracy theory, but still posted this for some reason, noting "It seems that while the virus is available online, it is not extremely easy to get, and would likely require some extremely creative fraud in order to make it happen," but concluding that "…it definitely does seem that it would be possible for a group or individual that is determined enough to make their way through the website's security measures."
I seriously doubt that.
For those of you who don't know, ATCC is basically a global clearinghouse for biological samples–they offer tissue culture lines, bacteria, viruses, etc. Researchers need these for a number of reasons, such as having positive controls for assays, or to be sure they're using the same cells as another investigator whose work they want to replicate or expand upon. I've used them many times to get both bacteriophage as well as isolates of bacteria for my research projects. And they won't ship to just some random person.
When I moved institutions and set up my new laboratory, on my first ATCC order, they contacted the director of biosafety at my institution to be sure my lab was equipped and ready to handle the organisms I had requested. When that was assured, we still had to establish a Material Transfer Agreement in order for the items to actually be shipped–a legal document between ATCC and my university, signed by an "authorized representative" of my institution. It was only after jumping through all of these hoops that I was finally able to get the requested samples.
Even if someone had chosen to order Zika, an obscure, mostly-asymptomatic virus that until this outbreak was not associated with any serious ill effects, and perpetuated the "extremely creative fraud" mentioned by the Freethought Project…why? They'd need to initially infect themselves or others in order for the mosquitoes to subsequently become competent vectors of the virus. The mosquitoes would feed on them when there was adequate virus in the blood, and presumably the insects would then be released–to what end? To spread a previously-thought-relatively-harmless virus into a new population? Again, nonsensical.
[Updated: this doesn't mean that "Rockefeller owns the patent on Zika virus," as sites like this are claiming. As far as I can ascertain, there are no patents involving Zika. What it means is that the virus was deposited by Jordi Casals, who was an eminent virologist and had a large collection of viruses that he accumulated throughout his career, including Zika (but many others, as a search of ATCC shows). Rockefeller makes no money on this–in fact, now some journals require deposition of strains to ATCC or similar banks as a condition for publishing.]
Claim four: Zika simply doesn't exist and/or isn't causing microcephaly, and the "outbreak" is a ploy to push the not-yet-extant Zika vaccine/get people to blindly obey the government. (hat tip to Mary Mangan for this one).
Who's claiming this? HIV denier and anti-vax advocate Jon Rappoport, among others (another post of his here on the topic). A very common sentiment in the comments pages on anti-vaccine pages.
What's wrong with it? Pretty much everything. Rappoport has made a meta-conspiracy theory, claiming the increase in microcephaly is caused not by Zika, but by a combination of pesticide use and manufacturing, the Tdap and GMO mosquitoes mentioned above, mosquito sprays, and poverty/sanitation/malnutrition (the boogeymen of every anti-vaccine advocate). While he's correct that the link between Zika and microcephaly isn't yet 100% confirmed (as I mentioned yesterday), he's taking at face value the claim that there actually is an increase in microcephaly at all–something which is also not been confirmed. So like many science deniers, he's taking the parts of the research that fit his biases (look at how toxic Brazil is! Of course it's causing health problems in babies!) and ignoring the parts he doesn't–that if there is an increase in microcephaly, Zika might be a driving force. In his mind, the virus is irrelevant and just a mechanism to make the public into "sheep" who will fall in line with government recommendations.
I'm sure this will not be the last of the conspiracy theories. Like those we saw with Ebola, these have the potential to cause real harm. Outcry over the GMO mosquito program can curtail use of another agent to control the Aedes aegypti mosquito–the primary vector not only of Zika, but also yellow fever, chikungunya, and dengue. I know those who benefit from these type of conspiracies will never stop churning them out (Mike Adams, I'm looking at you), but we need to bring them to the light and show just how little scientific support any of this has. It won't inoculate everyone against these ideas, but hopefully it will provide enough community immunity that they're unable to spread far and wide.
*Christie Wilcox pointed out another great observation on just how implausible this is–that the potential to insert a 8.4kb double-stranded DNA transposon into a 10.8kb single-stranded RNA virus is…not possible. So, yeah, just to add to the ridiculousness of that idea.]]>
I have a few pieces already on Zika, so I won't repeat myself here. The first is an introductory primer to the virus, answering the basic questions–what is it, where did it come from, what are its symptoms, why is it concerning? The second focuses on Zika's potential risk to pregnant women, and what is currently being advised for them.
I want to be clear, though–currently, we aren't 100% sure that Zika virus is causing microcephaly, the condition that is most concerning with this recent outbreak. The circumstantial evidence appears to be pretty strong, but we don't have good data on 1) how common microcephaly really was in Brazil (or other affected countries) prior to the outbreak. Microcephaly seems to have increased dramatically, but some of those cases are not confirmed, and others don't seem to be related to Zika; and if Zika really is causing microcephaly, 2) how Zika could be causing this, whether timing of the infection makes a difference, and whether women who are infected asymptomatically are at risk of medical problems in their developing fetuses.
The first question needs good epidemiological data for answers. This can be procured in a few ways. First, babies born with microcephaly, and their mothers, can be tested for Zika virus infection. This can be looked at a few ways: finding traces of the virus itself; finding antibodies to the virus (suggesting a past infection–but one can't know the exact timing of this); and asking about known infections during pregnancy. Each approach has advantages and limitations. Tracking the virus or its genetic material is a gold standard, but the virus may only be present in body fluids for a short time. So if you miss that window, a false negative could result. This could be coupled with serology, to look at past infection–but you can't be 100% certain in that case that the infection occurred during pregnancy–though with the apparently recent introduction of Zika into the Americas, it's likely that infection would be fairly recent.
Serology coupled with an infection in pregnancy that has symptoms consistent with Zika (headache, muscle/joint pain, rash, fever) would be a step up from this, but has some additional problems. Other viral infections can be similar in symptoms to Zika (dengue, chikungunya, even influenza if the patient is lacking a rash), so tests to rule those out should also be done. On the flip side, about 80% of Zika infections show no symptoms at all–so a woman could still have come into contact with the virus and have positive serology, but she wouldn't have any recollection of infection.
None of this is easy to carry out, but needs to be done in order to really establish with some level of certainty that Zika is the cause of microcephaly in this area. In the meantime, there are a few other possibilities to consider: that another virus (such as rubella) is circulating there. This is a known cause of multiple congenital issues, including microcephaly. This could explain why they're seeing cases of microcephaly in Brazil, but none have been reported thus far in Colombia. Another is that there is no real increase in microcephaly at all–that, for some reason, people have just recently started paying more attention to it, and associated it with the Zika outbreak in the area–what we call a surveillance bias.
This is a fast-moving story, and we probably won't have any solid answers to these questions for some time. In the interim, I think it's prudent to take this as a possibility, and raise awareness of the potential this virus *may* have on the developing fetus, so that women can take precautions as they're able. Public health is about prevention, and there have certainly been cases in the past of links between A and B that fell apart under further scrutiny. Zika/microcephaly may be one, but for now, it's an unfortunate case where "more research is needed" is about the best answer one can currently give.]]>
You read that right. And yes, it was peer-reviewed.
I've discussed previously how I've used the attention paid to zombies to talk about infectious diseases with children and other audiences; and to bring some science to the Walking Dead and other zombie tales. I even include a zombie lecture as part of the talks I give in my position as an American Society for Microbiology distinguished lecturer.
Like them or hate them, zombies are part of the zeitgeist. The Walking Dead is still one of the highest-rated programs on television, and its spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead, has been renewed for a second season. Early 2016 will bring us Pride and Prejudice and Zombies on film. Even Aaaahnold Schwarzenegger did a zombie movie. The Girl with all the Gifts was a sleeper hit, and a movie version of the zombie fungus video game The Last of Us is supposedly on the way.
So that's what the BMJ paper was all about. Of course, it's ridiculous at its core–no one really expects a zombie outbreak. *But*, we do see new diseases emerging all the time. MERS. Zika virus. Chikungunya. Hendra. Nipah. Pandemic influenza. Other, novel influenzas. And of course, the Ebola virus disease outbreak that is still ongoing in Guinea and Liberia (though cases have finally slowed to a mere trickle).
And we're still unprepared for them when they become explosive, as Ebola did in 2014. Analyses have showed that the delayed response to that outbreak cost lives. And that's for a virus that is not particularly easy to transmit, as it's only spread late in the illness via direct contact with infected bodily fluids. If that had been another virus that was airborne instead of bloodborne, the world could have been in a much worse situation. Now imagine that it was the Solanum virus of World War Z (the book version), slowly incubating in infected individuals as they move all over the globe. Definitely unprepared.
Furthermore, even with our handful of cases in the U.S., we saw that the hype and misinformation about Ebola was out of control. We saw this with H1N1 in 2009 as well, and H5N1 before that. We're still, as a whole, pretty bad at communicating about infectious disease threats–striking that correct balance of assurance that we know what we're doing, but acknowledging the gaps in our data and how we're working to address those. It's not an easy thing to do, but we need to continue improving. Because again, that's how it always starts in zombie movies, right?
Ebola and zombies also lead to ethical dilemmas. As I noted in the paper, for a zombie outbreak, there would remain the question of quarantine (for those exposed/bitten but not yet sick), and isolation (for those who are ill)–how would those be handled? What if quarantining the healthy-but-exposed led to essentially a death sentence, as the bitten would inevitably "turn", and possibly start chowing on the still-living who were quarantined with them? Again, ridiculous on its face, but it has parallels in real-life outbreaks and the legality and ethical quandaries of when to use such measures (and, of course, used with the assumption that they would be effective–which doesn't always hold). There are accusations that these were violated last year, when individuals coming back from working the Ebola outbreak were quarantined–lacking in scientific justification for sure, and potentially illegal as well.
Using zombies in lieu of real diseases gives researchers, public health professionals, policy makers, and laypeople the ability to discuss these heavy issues without getting bogged down in one specific outbreak or pathogen, because many of the problems we'd face during the zombie apocalypse are similar to those that come up in any serious epidemic: coordination. Funding. Communication. Training. Access to treatment or prevention. Though I didn't discuss it in this particular article, proper personal protective equipment (PPE) is another issue–both access to it (lacking in developing countries), and being sure to choose the right gear for the outbreak ("overprotection" is not always better). Further, it encourages individuals to put together their own zombie (disaster) preparedness plan, which is how the CDC has used the zombie phenomenon.
In short, it's way more fun for the average person to shoot the shit about zombies than to have a more serious discussion about influenza, or Ebola, or whatever the infectious disease du jour may be–and maybe even learn a bit of science and policy along the way.
I've been involved in a few discussions of late on science-based sites around yon web on antibiotic resistance and agriculture–specifically, the campaign to get fast food giant Subway to stop using meat raised on antibiotics, and a graphic by CommonGround using Animal Health Institute data, suggesting that agricultural animals aren't an important source of resistant bacteria. Discussing these topics has shown me there's a lot of misunderstanding of issues in antibiotic resistance, even among those who consider themselves pretty science-savvy.
I think this is partly an issue of, perhaps, hating to agree with one's "enemy." Vani Hari, the "Food Babe," recently also plugged the Subway campaign, perhaps making skeptics now skeptical of the issue of antibiotics and agriculture? Believe me, I am the farthest thing from a "Food Babe" fan and have criticized her many times on my Facebook page, but unlike her ill-advised and unscientific campaigns against things like fake pumpkin flavoring in coffee or "yoga mat" chemicals in Subway bread, this is one issue that actually has scientific support–stopped clocks and all that. Nevertheless, I think some people get bogged down in a lot of exaggeration or misinformation on the topic.
So, some thoughts. Please note that in many cases, my comments will be an over-simplification of a more complex problem, but I'll try to include nuance when I can (without completely clouding the issue).
First–why is antibiotic resistance an issue?
Since the development of penicillin, we have been in an ongoing "war" with the bacteria that make us ill. Almost as quickly as antibiotics are used, bacteria are capable of developing or acquiring resistance to them. These resistance genes are often present on transmissible pieces of DNA–plasmids, transposons, phage–which allow them to move between bacterial cells, even those of completely different species, and spread that resistance. So, once it emerges, resistance is very difficult to keep under control. As such, much better to work to prevent this emergence, and to provide conditions where resistant bacteria don't encounter selection pressures to maintain resistance genes (1).
In our 75-ish years of using antibiotics to treat infections, we've increasingly found ourselves losing this war. As bacterial species have evolved resistance to our drugs, we keep coming back with either brand-new drugs in different classes of antibiotics, or we've made slight tweaks to existing drugs so that they can escape the mechanisms bacteria use to get around them. And they're killing us. In the US alone, antibiotic-resistant infections cause about 2 million infections per year, and about 23,000 deaths due to these infections–plus tens of thousands of additional deaths from diseases that are complicated by antibiotic-resistant infections. They cost at least $20 billion per year.
But we're running out of these drugs. And where do the vast majority come from in any case? Other microbes–fungi, other bacterial species–so in some cases, that means there are also pre-existing resistance mechanisms to even new drugs, just waiting to spread. It's so bad right now that even the WHO has sounded the alarm, warning of the potential for a "post-antibiotic era."
This is some serious shit.
Where does resistance come from?
Resistant bacteria can be bred anytime an antibiotic is used. As such, researchers in the field tend to focus on two large areas: use of antibiotics in human medicine, and in animal husbandry. Human medicine is probably pretty obvious: humans get drugs to treat infections in hospital and outpatient settings, and in some cases, to protect against infection if a person is exposed to an organism–think of all the prophylactic doses of ciprofloxacin given out after the 2001 anthrax attacks, for example.
In human medicine, there is still much debate about 1) the proper dosing of many types of antibiotics–what is the optimal length of time to take them to ensure a cure, but also reduce the chance of incubating resistant organisms? This is an active area of research; and 2) when it is proper to prescribe antibiotics, period. For instance, ear infections. These cause many sleepless nights for parents, a lot of time off work and school, and many trips to clinics to get checked out. But do all kids who have an ear infection need antibiotics? Probably not. A recent study found that "watchful waiting" as an alternative to immediate prescription of antibiotics worked about as well as drug treatment for nonsevere ear infections in children–one data point among many that antibiotics are probably over-used in human medicine, and particularly for children. So this is one big area of interest and research (among many in human health) when it comes to trying to curb antibiotic use and employ the best practices of "judicious use" of antibiotics.
Another big area of use is agriculture (2). Just as in humans, antibiotics in ag can be used for treatment of sick animals, which is completely justifiable and accepted–but there are many divergences as well. For one, animals are often treated as a herd–if a certain threshold of animals in a population become ill, all will be treated in order to prevent an even worse outbreak of disease in a herd. Two, antibiotics can be, and frequently are, used prophylactically, before any disease is present–for example, at times when the producer historically has seen disease outbreaks in the herd, such as when animals are moved from one place to another (moving baby pigs from a nursery facility to a grower farm, as one example). Third, they can be used for growth promotion purposes–to make animals fatten up to market weight more quickly. The latter is, by far, the most contentious use, and the "low hanging fruit" that is often targeted for elimination.
From practically the beginning of this practice, there were people who spoke out against it, suggesting it was a bad idea, and that the use of these antibiotics in agriculture could lead to resistance which could affect human health. A pair of publications by Stuart Levy et al. in 1976 demonstrated this was more than a theoretical concern, and that antibiotic-resistant E. coli were indeed generated on farms using antibiotics, and transferred to farmers working there. Since this time, literally thousands of publications on this topic have demonstrated the same thing, examining different exposures, antibiotics, and bacterial species. There's no doubt, scientifically, that use of antibiotics in agriculture causes the evolution and spread of resistance into human populations.
Why care about antibiotic use in agriculture?
A quick clarification that's a common point of confusion–I'm not discussing antibiotic *residues* in meat products as a result of antibiotic use in ag (see, for example, the infographic linked above). In theory, antibiotic residues should not be an issue, because all drugs have a withdrawal period that farmers are supposed to adhere to prior to sending animals off to slaughter. These guidelines were developed so that antibiotics will not show up in an animal's meat or milk. The real issue of concern for public health are the resistant bacteria, which *can* be transmitted via these routes.
Agriculture comes up many times for a few reasons. First, because people have the potential to be exposed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria that originate on farms via food products that they eat or handle. Everybody eats, and even vegetarians aren't completely protected from antibiotic use on farms (I'll get into this below). So even if you're far removed from farmland, you may be exposed to bacteria incubating there via your turkey dinner or hamburger.
Second, because the vast majority of antibiotic use, by weight, occurs on farms–and many of these are the very same antibiotics used in human medicine (penicillins, tetracyclines, macrolides). It's historically been very difficult to get good numbers on this use, so you may have seen numbers as high as 80% of all antibiotic use in the U.S. occurs on farms. A better number is probably 70% (described here by Politifact), which excludes a type of antibiotic called ionophores–these aren't used in human medicine (3). So a great deal of selection for resistance is taking place on farms, but has the potential to spread into households across the country–and almost certainly has. Recent studies have demonstrated also that resistant infections transmitted through food don't always stay in your gut–they can also cause serious urinary tract infections and even sepsis. Studies from my lab and others (4) examining S. aureus have identified livestock as a reservoir for various types of this bacterium–including methicillin-resistant subtypes.
How does antibiotic resistance spread?
In sum–in a lot of different ways. Resistant bacteria, and/or their resistance genes, can enter our environment–our water, our air, our homes via meat products, our schools via asymptomatic colonization of students and teachers–just about anywhere bacteria can go, resistance genes will tag along. Kalliopi Monoyios created this schematic for the above-mentioned paper I wrote earlier this year on livestock-associated Staphyloccocus aureus and its spread, but it really holds for just about any antibiotic-resistant bacterium out there:
And as I noted above, once it's out there, it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle. And it can spread in such a multitude of different ways that it complicates tracking of these organisms, and makes it practically impossible to trace farm-origin bacteria back to their host animals. Instead, we have to rely on studies of meat, farmers, water, soil, air, and people living near farms in order to make connections back to these animals.
And this is where even vegetarians aren't "safe" from these organisms. What happens to much of the manure generated on industrial farms? It's used as fertilizer on crops, bringing resistant bacteria and resistance genes along with it, as well as into our air when manure is aerosolized (as it is in some, but not all, crop applications) and into our soil and water–and as noted below, antibiotics themselves can also be used in horticulture as well.
So isn't something being done about this? Why are we bothering with this anymore?
Kind of, but it's not enough. Scientists and advocates have been trying to do something about this topic since at least 1969, when the UK's Swann report on the use of Antibiotics in Animal Husbandry and Veterinary Medicine was released. As noted here:
One of its recommendations was that the only antimicrobials that should be permitted as growth promotants in animals were those that were not depended on for therapy in humans or whose use was not likely to lead to resistance to antimicrobials that were important for treating humans.
And some baby steps have been made previously, restricting use of some important types of antibiotics. More recently in the U.S., Federal Guidelines 209 and 213 were adopted in order to reduce the use of what have been deemed "medically-important" antibiotics in the livestock industry. These are a good step forward, but truthfully are only baby steps. They apply only to the use of growth-promotant antibiotics (those for "production use" as noted in the documents), and not other uses including prophylaxis. There also is no mechanism for monitoring or policing individuals who may continue to use these in violation of the guidelines–they have "no teeth." As such, there's concern that use for growth promotion will merely be re-labeled as use for prophylaxis.
Further, even now, we still have no data on the breakdown of antibiotic use in different species. We know over 32 million pounds were used in livestock in 2013, but with no clue how much of that was in pigs versus cattle, etc.
We do know that animals can be raised using lower levels of antibiotics. The European Union has not allowed growth promotant antibiotics since 2006. You'll read different reports of how successful that has been (or not); this NPR article has a balanced review. What's pretty well agreed-upon is that, to make such a ban successful, you need good regulation and a change in farming practices. Neither of these will be in place in the U.S. when the new guidance mechanisms go into place next year–so will this really benefit public health? Uncertain. We need more.
So this brings me back to Subway (and McDonald's, and Chipotle, and other giants that have pledged to reduce use of antibiotics in the animals they buy). Whatever large companies do, consumers are demonstrating that they hold cards to push this issue forward–much faster than the FDA has been able to do (remember, it took them 40 freaking years just to get these voluntary guidelines in place). Buying USDA-certified organic or meat labeled "raised without antibiotics" is no 100% guarantee that you'll have antibiotic-resistant-bacteria-free meat products, unfortunately, because contamination can be introduced during slaughter, packing, or handling–but in on-farm studies of animals, farmers, and farm environment, studies have typically found reduced levels of antibiotic-resistant bacteria on organic/antibiotic-free farms than their "conventional" counterparts (one example here, looking at farms that were transitioning to organic poultry farming).
Nothing is perfect, and biology is messy. Sometimes reducing antibiotic use takes a long time to have an impact, because resistance genes aren't always quickly lost from a population even when the antibiotics have been removed. Sometimes a change may be seen in the bacteria animals are carrying, but it takes longer for human bacterial populations to change. No one is expecting miracles, or a move to more animals raised antibiotic-free to be a cure-all. And it's not possible to raise every animal as antibiotic-free in any case; sick animals need to be treated, and even on antibiotic-free farms, there is often some low level of antibiotic use for therapeutic purposes. (These treated animals are then supposed to be marked and cannot be sold as "antibiotic-free"). But reducing the levels of unnecessary antibiotics in animal husbandry, in conjunction with programs promoting judicious use of antibiotics in human health, is a necessary step. We've waited too long already to take it.
(1) Though we know that, in some cases, resistance genes can remain in a population even in the absence of direct selection pressures–or they may be on a cassette with other resistance genes, so by using any one of those selective agents, you're selecting for maintenance of the entire cassette.
(2) I've chosen to focus on use in humans & animal husbandry, but antibiotics are also used in companion animal veterinary medicine and even for aquaculture and horticulture (such as for prevention of disease in fruit trees). The use in these fields is considerably smaller than in human medicine and livestock, but these are also active areas of research and investigation.
(3) This doesn't necessarily mean they don't lead to resistance, though. In theory, ionophores can act just like other antibiotics and co-select for resistance genes to other, human-use antibiotics, so their use may still contribute to the antibiotic resistance problem. Studies from my lab and others have shown that the use of zinc, for instance–an antimicrobial metal used as a dietary supplement on some pig farms, can co-select for antibiotic resistance. In our case, for methicillin-resistant S. aureus.
(4) See many more of my publications here, or a Nature profile about some of my work here.
TS: How did you become introduced to HIV denialism? Can you describe your involvement with this movement?
JS: It was during my research on HIV/AIDS that I stumbled upon the denialist information; information which is quite easy to find when doing a search for HIV on google. I was into conspiracy theories at the time and the thought of HIV being a conspiracy was something I found pretty interesting to say the least. I asked questions about the denialist information on official HIV/AIDS websites and was banned for doing so by moderators who told me that I was parroting denialst propaganda. This censorship reinforced my belief that perhaps the denialist information had some truth behind it, without knowing that the reason I was banned was because this information can be and is a danger to public health. I searched for denialst groups to attempt to make contact with these people in order to learn more and this led me to joining the Facebook group "Rethinking AIDS". Eventually, I decided to become a vocal speaker for the denialists because I believed at the time that their information was genuine and I wanted to do the best I could to spread this information in the hopes of helping other people.
During my time with them I was advised not to speak to certain people from the "orthodox side" because they're all lying shills and sociopaths or not take seriously scientific information on HIV because according to the denialists it's all propaganda from the "AIDS establishment". Once I lifted my confirmation bias and decided to disassociate myself from Rethinking AIDS and denialism in general, it caused a wave of attacks, anger, disbelief and insults with some members even alluding to the fact that I was the leader of Rethinking AIDS at the time. Of course I wasn't and I always reminded them that I was and independent even if I was supporting their point of view regarding HIV/AIDS. You can say I was very involved with the movement; I spoke on radio shows about denialism, filmed my own youtube videos, wrote my own articles about denialism and attempted to inform every person I could about the denialist information.
TS: You mentioned the notorious HIV denialism documentary "House of Numbers" in your blog post. What did you find so compelling about that movie?
JS: The most famous denialist documentary happens to be "House of Numbers" and denialists recommend the viewing of this film to everyone they speak to because according to them, this documentary and others like it prove their allegations that HIV is a scientific fraud. It does so by attempting to show people how HIV tests are unreliable, HIV has never been isolated, HIV drugs are the cause of peoples' illness and death, etc. I can honestly say I believed the same until I viewed the youtube series "Debunking the AIDS Denialist Movie House of Numbers" by Myles Power. His series deconstructs "House of Numbers" to show you that the film is nothing more than a biased piece of denialist propaganda. I was aware of Myles' series when I was still a denialist and never took it seriously because for me and others, his series was nothing other than propaganda from the "AIDS establishment". Once I disassociated from denialism and lifted my confirmation bias, I decided to give Myles' videos another watch and this time I could see clearly how deceptive the movie "House of Numbers" is. The film contains interviews with scientists that have been edited in such a way to make people believe these scientists support the idea that HIV is a fraud, when in reality many of their statements were taken out of context and some have even released statements to clarify their real position on HIV/AIDS. People to this day are being misled into believing "House of Numbers" is proof that HIV is a fraud, when in reality it's a cleverly designed tool of denialist propaganda.
TS: What caused you to modify your stance?
JS: During the last year with the denialists, Jessica and I had a son who was born negative for HIV because my she and my child received the appropriate treatment to avoid vertical transmission. I was still entrenched in denialism during the birth of my son and was not too happy about the doctors wanting to give AZT to my wife and newborn child but decided to do so for two reasons. The main reason was the worry that the authorities would force treatment on my son but the second reason was a thought that crossed my mind: What if I was wrong? We opted for the treatment and hoped for the best and although everything worked out fine for us; the denialists chastised us for our decision. The final blow which led to my disassociation from denialism was when months after our son's birth, my wife Jessica fell ill with pneumocystis pneumonia again; this time so severe she almost died. Jessica restarted treatment after falling ill the first time in 2011 but only stayed on treatment until we joined the denialists; we both stopped treatment during our time with them because as they preach, we believed the medications were toxic poisons and the real cause of AIDS. Something was definitely not right here and I decided to end my time as and HIV/AIDS denialist. Fortunately Jessica recovered and we are back on treatment but this choice and our disassociation from denialism caused us to be attacked, insulted, unfriended on Facebook by many people I was associated with; something akin to being thrown out of a cult, actually.
TS: What has been the response you've gotten from the denialist community? How have you and your wife handled it?
JS: As I previously mentioned, we were attacked, insulted and even my son was brought into the filth they spewed against us. The president of the group "Rethinking AIDS", David Crowe, accused me of selling my soul to the devil, many others continued to harass me and even told me that our decision to get back on treatment will result in the death of my whole family. My wife and I have pretty thick skins and while she ignores them and is happy she is doing better now, I use my knowledge to help other people avoid the same trap we fell into in the hopes that perhaps I can do some real good this time and avoid people's suffering because they were fed and believed incorrect medical information. The best example I can make of how we were treated by the denialist community after our disassociation would be how a member of Scientology is treated once he or she decides to abandon the church. To the denialists we are nothing more than human garbage. I was called a shill and a sellout, and they accuse me of leading people to the death camps because today I promote HIV/AIDS awareness instead of pseudoscientific nonsense. The denialists in my eyes are a cult; too bad I did not see this before becoming entrenched into their dogma and becoming a voice for their agenda.
TS: How do you feel others can avoid being miseld (potentially dangerously so) by the denial movement?
JS: In the past, censorship of denialist information was the norm; pretend it doesn't exist and hope nobody will notice. I believe that people should be informed about the dangers of eschewing necessary treatment for HIV and what can possibly happen to them if they do. I have people writing to me daily asking for help or wanting to hear my story because they got involved in denialism and are falling ill but don't know what to do. Although I cannot and do not offer medical advice, I share my story in the hopes that they make the best choice for themselves. It's great to also hear one of these same people write to me again down the road to thank me because their health has improved after returning on or starting treatment. Articles such as this one and many others exposing the denialist agenda are a great help and I will continue to do my part to make sure people understand the risks they are taking when getting involved with HIV/AIDS denialism. Giving people the correct information regarding HIV/AIDS, how today it is no longer a death sentence and that on treatment they should expect to live a long and healthy life comparable to a person not living with HIV is also very helpful. For now me and a few others are the only voices speaking against denialism but there should be more. In some countries it's illegal to disseminate incorrect medical information and I believe such a law could prove to be of some benefit in this country as well. The article entitled "Can You Inoculate Against Science Denial?" is a great read and explains very well what we are facing today and how to approach this issue.
TS: What message would you pass on to others who are newly diagnosed?
JS: If you're newly diagnosed, the treatments today can keep you healthy and living a long life comparable to a person not living with HIV and there are many people and organizations that can offer you support; you are not alone. Remember, HIV doesn't define you, you define HIV. Being newly diagnosed is a life changing experience, but it doesn't have to be a bad experience. By getting tested and getting into treatment, you are taking control of your health. Become informed as much as you can about HIV. Ask your doctor questions, research, reach out to support groups and if you happen to stumble upon the denialist information, make sure you know what you're possibly getting yourself into before jumping on the bandwagon. If anyone newly diagnosed is reading this and would like to contact me for information or support, feel free to reach out.
Now another "Frontiers In" journal has stepped in it, publishing a paper that has the anti-vaccine groupies frothing at the mouth. Published in Frontiers in Neurology this time, the paper, "Biopersistence and brain translocation of aluminum
adjuvants of vaccines," is another review article using cherry-picked data to suggest that aluminum in vaccines accumulates in the brain and nervous system, causing "toxic effects."
The editor of this paper is Lucija Tomljenovic of the University of British Columbia. Tomljenovic is a biochemist who has made a career, with her advisor Chris Shaw, of publishing commentary suggesting that vaccines, and particularly the HPV vaccine and vaccine adjuvants, are unsafe. It probably will not shock readers that Shaw and Tomljenovic are funded in part by the The Dwoskin Family Foundation and the Katlyn Fox Foundation, both of which are big players in the anti-vaccine community (see this post at Harpocrates Speaks for more background info on those foundations). Both appeared at the 2011 Vaccine Safety Conference, with other notable vaccine foes including the NVIC's Barbara Loe Fisher and Lawrence Palevsky, a doctor who appeared in the anti-vaccine movie "The Greater Good" and apparently spoke on the topic, "Rethinking the Germ Theory." That should speak volumes about the scientific validity of the movement. Meanwhile, Shaw specifically notes in his bio, "He has two children. The youngest has not been vaccinated."
Who else appeared at that meeting? The first author of the current paper, Romain K. Gherardi.
Others have already posted stinging critiques of Shaw and Tomljenovic's previous papers (even the World Health Organization has criticized them), so I won't go further into the science–suffice it to say, Shaw & Tomljenovic are cited widely within the review, and several other important citations are self-citations of the first author, Gherardi. It should be noted that Gherardi also receives funding from the Dwoskin Foundation. Further, Tomljenovic served not only as the paper's editor, but also as a reviewer–and the Frontiers In journals as a whole have a crazy-high acceptance rate of 80-90% in the first place. Another reviewer, Mark Burns, is on FN's editorial board.
So while the anti-vaccine brigade will count this publication as a victory, it's really just another case of a poor paper being published in a shoddy journal, shepherded to publication by a like-minded editor–and you could certainly at least argue there was a conflict of interest here, with both Gherardi and Tomljenovic funded by the Dwoskins and running in the same small anti-vaccine circles. Not that it matters to those who will gleefully cite this publication, of course. The only time they really want to "follow the money" or pay attention to such matters is when the money is coming from "Big Pharma" or the government or other such boogeymen in order to allege some kind of conspiracy. Too bad they don't hold all publications up to such lofty standards, or recognize conspiracy when it's actually in their own backyard.
However, with all of this research, there's been a big missing link that I repeatedly get asked about: what about actual, symptomatic infections in people? How often do S. aureus that farmers might encounter on the farm make them ill? We tried to address this in a retrospective survey we published previously, but that research suffered from all the problems that retrospective surveys do–recall bias, low response rate, and the possibility that those who responded did so *because* they had more experience with S. aureus infections, thus making the question more important to them. Plus, because it was asking about the past, we had no way to know that, even if they did report a prior infection, if it was due to ST398 or another type of S. aureus.
So, in 2011, we started a prospective study that was just published in Clinical Infectious Diseases, enrolling over 1,300 rural Iowans (mostly farmers of some type, though we did include individuals with no farming exposures as well, and spouses and children of farmers) and testing them at enrollment for S. aureus colonization in the nose or throat. Like previous studies done by our group and others in the US, we found that pig farmers were more likely to be carrying S. aureus that were resistant to multiple antibiotics, and especially to tetracycline–a common antibiotic used while raising pigs. Surprisingly, we didn't find any difference in MRSA colonization among groups, but that's likely because we enrolled relatively small-scale farmers, rather than workers in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) like we had examined in prior research, who are exposed to many more animals living in more crowded conditions (and possibly receiving more antibiotics).
What was unique about this study, besides its large size, was that we then followed participants for 18 months to examine development of S. aureus infections. Participants sent us a monthly questionnaire telling us that they had a possible Staph infection or not; describing the infection if there was one, including physician diagnosis and treatment; and when possible, sending us a sample of the infected area for bacterial isolation and typing. Over the course of the study, which followed people for over 15,ooo "person-months" in epi-speak, 67 of our participants reported developing over 100 skin and soft tissue infections. Some of them were "possibly" S. aureus–sometimes they didn't go to the doctor, but they had a skin infection that matched the handout we had given them that gave pictures of what Staph infections commonly look like. Other times they were cellulitis, which often can't be definitively confirmed as caused by S. aureus without more invasive tests. Forty-two of the infections were confirmed by a physician, or at the lab as S. aureus due to a swab sent by the patient.
Of the swabs we received that were positive, 3/10 were found to be ST398 strains–and all of those were in individuals who had contact with livestock. A fourth individual who also had contact with pigs and cows had an ST15 infection. Individuals lacking livestock contact had infections with more typical "human" strains, such as ST8 and ST5 (usually described as "community-associated" and "hospital-associated" types of Staph). So yes, ST398 is causing infections in farmers in the US–and very likely, these are flying under the radar, because 1) farmers really, really don't like to go to the doctor unless they're practically on their deathbed, and 2) even if they do, and even if the physician diagnoses and cultures S. aureus (which is not incredibly common–many diagnoses are made on appearance alone), there are very limited programs in rural areas to routinely type S. aureus. Even in Iowa, where invasive S. aureus infections were previously state-reportable, we know that fewer than half of the samples even from these infections ever made it to the State lab for testing–and for skin infections? Not even evaluated.
As warnings are sounded all over the world about the looming problem of antibiotic resistance, we need to rein in the denial of antibiotic resistance in the food/meat industry. Some positive steps are being made–just the other day, Tyson foods announced they plan to eliminate human-use antibiotics in their chicken, and places like McDonald's and Chipotle are using antibiotic-free chicken and/or other meat products in response to consumer demand. However, pork and beef still remain more stubborn when it comes to antibiotic use on farms, despite a recent study showing that resistant bacteria generated on cattle feed yards can transmit via the air, and studies by my group and others demonstrating that people who live in proximity to CAFOs or areas where swine waste is deposited are more likely to have MRSA colonization and/or infections–even if it's with the "human" types of S. aureus. The cat is already out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle, whatever image or metaphor you prefer–we need to increase surveillance to detect and mitigate these issues, better integrate rural hospitals and clinics into our surveillance nets, and work on mitigation of resistance development and on new solutions for treatment cohesively and with all stakeholders at the table. I don't think that's too much to ask, given the stakes.
Reference: Wardyn SE, Forshey BM, Farina S, Kates AE, Nair R, Quick M, Wu J, Hanson BM, O'Malley S, Shows H, Heywood E, Beane-Freeman LE, Lynch CF, Carrel M, Smith TC. Swine farming is a risk factor for infection with and high prevalence of multi-drug resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Clinical Infectious Diseases, in press, 2015. Link to press release.


text:
Google for EntrepreneursShared publicly -
Today we are excited to share our next big project, a partnership with The Factory in Berlin. This space will be a central hub for the startup community, and we will team up with The Factory to host events, talks, and programs for local entrepreneurs. Construction is underway!
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subset: commoncrawl


text:
I believe that FreeMind could strongly benefit from a
very simple internal vector graphics tool. There are
many issues with pixel images, such as them not scaling
when zooming in/out of the map and that they are not
stored within the map file itself. Also, while pouring
out thoughts into a map it would be useful to be able
to scribble simple line drawings as part of that process.
This would be particularly useful for Tablet PC users.
Could it be possible to somehow pull parts of Inkscape
into FreeMind?
Sumit Agarwal


text:
Hometown: Amsterdam
April 21, 2013
Hey! I'm a (web) developer, with experience with PHP, C, JS, Java, some Scala and more. I would like to learn more and meet new people!
Cool! ;)
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Blogs Cliopatria Centropa ProjectJul 7, 2006 12:42 pm
Centropa Project
Centropa is the signature project of the Central Europe Center for Research and Documentation, a US-based non-profit corporation with headquarters in Vienna, Austria.
The project is composed of an international team of historians, filmmakers, web designers, journalists, educators, photographers and Jewish community activists. Their goal is to create a window into Jewish history, and current events, in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. By marrying together the newest technologies and serious research methods, they seek to take Jewish history off the shelf, and bring it into your homes, classrooms, synagogues, libraries, book clubs and organizations.
Centropa's largest project is Witness to a Jewish Century, a searchable online library of Jewish family pictures, and the memories that go with them. Right now, more than forty Centropa interviewers are visiting elderly Jews living in Central and Eastern Europe, and asking them to share with us their precious family photographs, and their stories about the people in those photographs. Think of Witness as your own tool for creating custom made files on everyday Jewish life before, during, as well as after, the Holocaust.
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PC BFN fans rejoice..
According to www.lucasarts.com Battle For Naboo is being ported to the PC very soon.
Just looking at the screenshots, it appears the resolution in this version is much higher than the N64 version (as one would expect). Not sure what else is really new though (if anything).
Of course to those of us expecting the upcoming PC announcement was going to be a new game, well I'm sure we're a bit disapointed. ; p
I don't think this is the new exciting announcement SJ was talking about, but this is enough to satisy me for awhile...
I hate to say but I told ya so........ I told you so in the "Check this out" thread on this board. So hahahaha. And I bet none of you believed me. Well.........In Your Face! That's why it was out of stock on www.Amazon.com and why it said it was on PC. So Amazon.com must be in on this with Lucasarts. So like I said, I told ya so.......... http://www.jediknight.net/mboard/biggrin.gif
Devaronian:What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages?
Devaronian:What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?
Devaronian:What do you call someone who speaks one language?
Actually Kurgan, I can't see a diffrence between the screen shots for the PC and my N64 but then the expansion pack, makes it much better... I suppose...
Actually I have a bad feeling that the "exciting announcement" was just that, BFN for PC.
Here's a comparison, look closely:
(As to the expansion pack, I can't say, I've never seen it in action)
Top: N64 version
Bottom: PC version
[This message has been edited by Kurgan (edited January 26, 2001).]
Again, another comparison
(Top: N64, Bottom: PC):
To my eye, the PC version is much crisper and clearer.
yep, just like rogue squadron.
I really don't see that much of a diffrence... I'd say the sky looks clearer on the "liberation of Camp four" pic... that's about all....
Man, you're eyes are screwed up...
Like, totally man, my eyes are like, totally fine :P
Yeah the PC looks clearer... But... It can just be that it's easier to take a screen shot on a PC then on an N64... Also it would matter what kind of graphic card you have AND if you have an expansion pak on your N64 (which I do).
Good news is that PC games are usually (or relatively quickly become) much cheaper than N64 games! I mean I bought Racer & TPM together (it was a 2 pak) for 25$CAN (which is like maybe 17$US on a day the Canadian dollars isn't too weak, but that's another story all together)... Racer, because I bought the N64 version as well (please, do not ask why) was 40$CAN (you do the math for US currency). So kewl... PC is good!
You can do it your own way
Just as long as it's done just how I say...
oooh goodie
Funny.. the pics that I posted originally for the PC are not the ones currently being shown. Must be shuffling the files over at lucasarts.com. ; )
Those are good points, however, I can tell you first hand comparing N64 graphics to modern PC graphics inevitably leads me to favor those of the PC, and it stands to reason that while LEC does an admirable job of squeezing every last ounce of power and detail out of the older system, it just doesn't compare in the final estimation.
Agreed Kurgan... But getting the N64 version has a few advantages...
a) if someone else is on the computer, you can go play it anyways on the 64
b) the N64 will never be slow b/c you forgot to disable ur virus checker and all the other crap all the PC program automatically load for you...
c) if you don't have a joystick/controller the N64 beats playing with the keyboard!
hehehe yeah at least LEC are still releasing stuff for the 64...
You can do it your own way
Just as long as it's done just how I say...
True, not everyone has a fast computer they don't have to share, nice controllers, and no decent TV.. ; p
hehe. I think the n64 has a few advanteges too, like when you're traveling, you can't bring a computer (unless it's a laptop, and laptops don't let you play most good games), and the n64 can be hooked up to someone's tv if they let you.
Computers i think are better though. You can upgrade them, get demos for free, games are cheaper (mario 64 for $40 makes me sick especially to see racer, which is expansion pack and rumble pak compatible drop to a beautiful $10!!!), you can get more out of the computer games too, since you can hack them and make your own levels.
the expansion pack does nothing good compared to the computer, i'm never playing rogue squadron on my 64 again (or at least for a while) after what it looks like on my computer. The graphics are better, the fog doesn't kill you (it's more clearer, but there is still fog to keep the frame up), the sound is better, and the lighting effects are better.
Oh don't get me wrong, the PC is awesome for all the afore mentioned points, but I like having a console in the house that I can just fire up and play for half an hour ya know http://www.jediknight.net/mboard/smile.gif
If I had to choose though I would pick my PC http://www.jediknight.net/mboard/smile.gif
You can do it your own way
Just as long as it's done just how I say...
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Okay we got out of the week without too much damage from the godless, mindless, spineless, spandex donning, bottom-feeding doom and gloom crowd. So far, so good.
Monday will be a decision day. Tuesday may be too late as GS announces before the open. INTC after the close.
So, if you want to play either of those, then Monday before the close is your deadline.
When the smoke clears, Wednesday morning I expect to see APOL off to the races and all of tech higher.
So, jellyfish investors (bears and shorts for anyone who isn't paying attention), I call and I raise. What you got?
1st, Waldo..pin yourself an extra obama hopium pin on your chest, which will get you an extra helping of hummus at the local grocer...for being so positive and optimistic...
2nd, I am a trader and call it as I see it. Unlike you, I play the market by what it is doing, not what I want it to do. I trade minute to minute and hour to hour...your long winding waxing of any stocks bright fundamentals is meaningless...I operate out of the premiss that somebody always knows more than me (the average trader).
3rd with that said, I see next week getting another nice bounce, which I will ride long and set up for my next shorts.
See just because I don't ride Obama's jock, does not mean I can't play the market long...I could care less who is in charge (well that is not totally accurate) but as far as I have any control, I just want to trade.
So go ahead and wax poetic with your pelosi supporting/wine sipping California crowd...
"So go ahead and wax poetic with your pelosi supporting/wine sipping California crowd..."
Yes, and you continue with your support for the idiots who brought us the worst economic events in 70 years.
Your team took the field full of testosterone and bravado and then lost the game by 178-0 and here you are still talking smack. Most people would have the sense to just shut up after such a humiliation. Or at least to stop with the really stupid "wine sipping California crowd" type remarks. You got your asses kicked on the field. On the field. What you say in the bar now just makes you look like more a simpering idiot.
There hasn't been a Republican president in 25 years who didn't create the largest budget deficits in the history of the world by the time they left office. Republicans used to stand for solid financial management. But that was in the time of what? Eisenhower? Now they stand for mouthy arrogance (you have this down), resigning when the going gets tough (Palin) and running off to Argentina to see the girlfriend.
So, yes - I support the idea of electing smart people as opposed to non-performing ideologues. We can't afford another financial/economic train wreck.
Your team screwed the pooch. So sit on the bench and shut up at least until the new team has had a reasonable period of time in which to fix their screw-ups...
"In the end, it is about philosophy I guess."
No, it's not. It's about performance and financial restraint. Republican presidents believed as you that it is about philosophy. They were ideologues and thought the "right" ideas trumped any need for good financial management. All recent Republican administrations have been financial disasters for the American people.
Greenspan in his book commented that Bush disregarded the need for financial restraint because of his need to fulfill his campaign promises. So, we got huge tax cuts and a hugely expensive war and an economic disaster as one Republican president after the other gutted the US Treasury.
"The feel good socialism thing always fails"
Yes, that Social Security has been a real disaster, hasn't it? Maybe you should opt out...
Just answer one question, dumh:
Why can't Republicans balance budgets?
Because nothing else matters...
You really are an idiot...Walli what do people do with new wealth? CMon what do they do? You have no clue.
Help me out, how much of our money should we give to the government? Help me out with some of the key programs that need funding?
What are unions walli, do they promote freedom and excellence? Not a chance..that is the pychology you want for the whole country...that is so long as you are on top of the food chain...another pussy who can not compete and needs a herd of sheep to make him think he is smart....
Dumh, that wasn't the Democratic Party that was telling you that you would never amount to anything - that was your mother.
"Yep rich get richer and poor poorer because libs keep all the sheep on the mental midget plantation."
Bullshit. It was the Republican tax cuts for the rich...
"where did any democrat balance a budget? Help me out?"
Kennedy, LBJ, Carter, Clinton.
Democrats know how to balance budgets. Republicans don't. It's all on the chart, dumh. You can read a chart, right?
We're fixing the mess Bush left us.
And Reagan, and Bush again.
When Republicans start balancing budgets, Democrats will be able to stop fixing their messes.
Hint: Stop with the stupid tax cuts will fix everything mentality. There hasn't been a Republican administration in recent history in which the rich didn't get richer and the poor poorer. The rich never get tired of squeezing the middle class. The Republican Party is the party of rich white people. And therein lies the problem of ever winning the White House again.
BTW how much taxes do most people pay...50% of your group pays non...so somebody else getting a cut hurts them how?
"So you are ok with people paying no taxes?"
No, Dumh - I'm not a member of the mindless tax cut group. That is I'm not a Republican.
The people who pay no taxes are either the really poor or the really rich. I have no problem with the really poor not paying taxes. Do I need to explain to you why the really poor can't pay taxes?
I see no reason to over-burden the middle class just so the rich can have some extra spending money. America was based on the idea of a strong middle class - NOT the idea of the rich constantly getting richer. Under Republicans the rich constantly get richer. But it's never enough. There is always a new round of requests for tax cuts, primarily for the rich.
You're not even rich, Dumh. You're just a wannabe. Just one more confused person (like Joe the Plumber) who thinks the Republicans represent your interests when they really don't.
I would welcome you resisting my comments with facts, analysis or logic. Instead I get Fox News channel chanting and name calling. The only thing you are bitch-slapping is your image as an able debater...
Yes, let's focus especially on 2000-2006 when the Republican President and Congress were creating mountains of red ink.
As far as the early part goes, Clinton deserves the credit on this and not the Republican House. My source? Alan Greenspan, whom I think knows a little more about it than you do.
The chart is clear. Republicans don't balance budgets...


text:
Leg Swap
"Dad's legs ended up looking like moms! Whoops!"
(submitted by Anna)
"One Fall day when the two and four year old were done with the shoot."
(submitted by Brett)
"This is a photo of my parents and siblings, taken on Mom and Dad's 50th wedding anniversary. We had a big party for them and had arranged several photo shoots for a family picture. The photographer had arrived somewhat inebriated at our first location, which was an outdoor site, beautifully located in front of a lake. He had really gotten on Mom's nerves because he was so obviously tipsy and kept egging her on to smile (which wasn't one of her best assets). The last stop was his studio. Mom was on her last nerve and this is what we got."
(submitted by Juli)
"My Mom and Dad at the renowned French chateau in Chambord…with some keen exchange students who seem to have been separated from their group."
(submitted by Allyson)
"This pretty much sums up my childhood. I'm the blond on the left burying my head in my sister's lap while she gets in a cheap shot. The youngest is fish-hooking my other sister while my mother looks on and laughs My father is letting everyone know what his future looks like with four daughters like these."
(submitted by Linday)
"Dinner was on the wife last night."
(via source)
"I found this in my parents' record collection over the weekend. My Mom swears it was a gag gift."
(via source)


text:
Book your room at Cahernane House Hotel
Get an overview of this hotelFamily-friendly hotel with 2 restaurants and bar/lounge
This family-friendly Killarney hotel is within 2 mi (3 km) of INEC Killarney, Ross Golf Club, and Killarney Cathedral. St. Mary's Cathedral and Killarney Race Course are also within 2 mi (3 km).
Hotel Features
2 restaurants, a bar/lounge, and coffee/tea in a common area are available at this hotel. Free WiFi in public areas and free self parking are also provided. Additionally, 24-hour room service, a meeting room, and dry cleaning are onsite.
Room Amenities
All 38 rooms boast deep soaking tubs and offer free WiFi and 24-hour room service. Other amenities available to guests include separate bathtubs and showers, free bottled water, and hair dryers.Would you like to give us feedback? Share it! Opens in a new window
Cahernane House HotelMuckross Road Killarney Kerry
Hotel Amenities
Hotel Amenities
Dining is available at one of the hotel's 2 restaurants. A bar/lounge is on site where guests can unwind with a drink. Public areas are equipped with complimentary high-speed wireless Internet access. This Victorian hotel also offers a library, tour/ticket assistance, and a garden. Complimentary self parking is available on site.
- Babysitting or childcare (surcharge)
- Bar/lounge
- Breakfast available (surcharge)
- Coffee/tea in common areas
- Dry cleaning/laundry service
- Elevator/lift
- Fireplace in lobby
- Free self parking
- Free WiFi
- Garden
- Laundry facilities
- Library
- Luggage storage
- Number of buildings/towers - 1
- Number of floors - 3
- Number of restaurants - 2
- One meeting room
- Tennis on site
- Total number of rooms - 38
- Tours/ticket assistance
- Wedding services
- Year Built 1877
Family Friendly Amenities
- Babysitting or childcare (surcharge)
- Cribs/infant beds (complimentary)
- Free Wi-Fi
- In-room childcare (surcharge)
- Laundry facilities
Available in all rooms: Free WiFi
Available in some public areas: Free WiFi
Free self parking
Room Amenities
- Air conditioning
- Bathrobes
- Free bottled water
- Free toiletries
- Free cribs/infant beds
- Daily housekeeping
- Deep soaking bathtub
- Free WiFi
- Hair dryer
- In-room childcare (surcharge)
- Iron/ironing board
- Partially open bathroom
- Room service (24 hours)
- Separate bathtub and shower
- Slippers
- Turndown service
Where to Eat
Full breakfasts are available for a surcharge.
Herbert Room - This restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Cellar Bar - This bistro serves lunch only. Guests can enjoy drinks at the bar.
24-hour room service is available.
Nearby Things to Do
The recreational activities listed below are available either on site or nearby; fees may apply.
- Golfing nearby
- Sailing nearby
- Mountain biking nearby
- Hiking/biking trails nearby
- Bicycle rentals on site
To make requests for specific accessibility needs, complete the "Special or Accessibility Requests" section of "Trip Preferences" when you book your hotel.
Hotel Policies
Check-in time starts at 2 PM
Check-out time is noon
Payment types
- Pets not allowed
You need to know
Extra-person charges may apply and vary depending on hotel policy.
Government-issued photo identification and a credit card or cash deposit are required at check-in for incidental charges.
Special requests are subject to availability upon check-in and may incur additional charges. Special requests cannot be guaranteed.
No rollaway/extra beds available
Optional extras
- Breakfast fee: between EUR 10 and EUR 15 per person (approximately)
Hotel Name
- Cahernane
- Cahernane Hotel
- Cahernane House
- Cahernane House Hotel Killarney
- Cahernane House Killarney
- Cahernane House Hotel
- Cahernane Hotel Killarney
- The Cahernane House Hotel
We should mention
One child 2 years old or younger stays free when occupying the parent or guardian's room, using existing bedding.
National Rating
Official Ireland Rating provided by Fáilte Ireland (The National Tourism Development Authority)